Compressor for guitars

Many guitarists still swear
by the good old valve amplifier.
It is fact that valve amplifiers
produce a sound different
frorn that of a solid-state
amplifier. This is caused mainJy
by the fact that in valve amplifers the transition from the
linear to the non-linear part of
the operating range is more gradual
than in solid-state ampliflers,
in which the transition
is sudden. In other words, invalve
amplifiers, the distortion increases
with increased drive
levels and may thus be seen as
a sort of dynamic compression.
This phenomenon does not occur
in solid-state devices, where
the transition is quite sudden:
the resulting sound is unpleasant.